Journal of Catholic Education

After the governments of China and India, the Catholic Church is probably the third largest provider of K12 education in the world. How has growth in enrollment in K12 Catholic schools varied across countries over the last two decades? Which countries have accounted for most of the growth at the regional and global level? What has been the role of the number of schools and the size of schools in enrollment growth, or in the decline observed in some countries? Given trends towards higher enrollment in the developing world due to population growth and higher educational attainment, has enrollment growth ...

Journal of Catholic Education

Journal of Catholic Education

Three hundred sixty-one seminarians from the 48 diocesan seminaries in the United States and the North American College in Rome, Italy responded to a survey regarding their sentiments about the value of Catholic schools, their effectiveness, and the importance of financially supporting them. The results suggest that while diocesan seminarians are generally supportive of Catholic schools, they are more positive about the value of Catholic schools and the importance of providing financial support than they are about the effectiveness of Catholic schools, especially their religious effectiveness. The seminarians’ sentiments toward value and financial support are comparable to those of previous ...

Journal of Catholic Education

This article presents the results of an inquiry into the advantages and disadvantages of regional Catholic school systems, executed by practitioners in the field of Catholic Education. The findings support the idea that the regional Catholic school system is a valuable strategy for providing Catholic education in areas where traditional parish-based schools are no longer viable and suggest that the six major school functions--management, educational programming, school community, Catholic identity, finances, and enrollment--are strengthened as a result of the regional Catholic school system approach. The findings indicate that implementation of the regional system will be most successful when it is ...

School Improvement In The Digital Age: A Study Of The Alliance For Catholic Education Blended Learning Pilot, Anthony J. D'Agostino, Monica Kowalski

Journal of Catholic Education

This article presents a description of the Alliance for Catholic Education’s (ACE’s) approach to and experience of implementing a pilot blended learning and school improvement initiative in five Catholic schools in three U.S. (arch)dioceses. Program evaluation data is summarized, including results of teacher surveys measuring increases in perceptions of knowledge of and attitudes toward components of the model. The project description and findings offer a model for other Catholic schools considering introducing blended learning approaches as part of school improvement efforts.

Journal of Catholic Education

The faith-based identity of Catholic schools is increasingly problematic in a secularised society where the numbers of teachers belonging to religious orders are diminishing rapidly. Teachers’ views regarding the characteristics of Catholic schools are an important aspect of the identity of such schools. The authors locate Catholic schools in the USA and Queensland, Australia, in their respective contexts and compare teachers’ ratings of the importance of eleven given characteristics of Catholic schools as seen by 3,389 teachers in USA Catholic schools and 2,287 teachers in Queensland Catholic schools. When the mean ratings for each jurisdiction were statistically correlated ...

School Choice Vouchers And Special Education In Indiana Catholic Diocesan Schools, William H. Blackwell, June M. Robinson

Journal of Catholic Education

Catholic schools are now located at a crossroads of school choice voucher programs and special education services. With enrollment in Catholic schools declining over the past several decades, voucher programs that allow parents to use public funds for tuition at private schools – including tuition for students with disabilities – could possibly help to steady or even reverse this decline. This study examined the impact of Indiana’s statewide voucher program on Catholic schools, student enrollment, and special education services in three large diocesan school systems. The findings address issues related to enrollment growth, changing student population characteristics, special education services, and ...

Providing Access For Students With Moderate Disabilities: An Evaluation Of A Professional Development Program At A Catholic Elementary School, Matthew P. Cunningham, Karen K. Huchting, Diane Fogarty, Victoria Graf

Journal of Catholic Education

After a significant policy change led to the admittance of students with moderate disabilities, St. Agnes School (SAS; pseudonym)—a Catholic PK-8 school in Southern California—implemented an 18-month professional development (PD) program to improve teachers’ inclusive classroom practices. Grounded in the theoretical framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL; Center for Applied Special Technology, 2015b), the PD program included cyclical, one-on-one instructional coaching sessions that were led by trained UDL coaches and consisted of lesson demonstrations and personalized feedback. While SAS teachers held state credentials, most had very little training to work with students with special needs prior to ...

Journal of Catholic Education

For many years, the Catholic school system within the United States was considered the preeminent educational institution, particularly for poor and marginalized students that live in low income, inner city areas. Now, given the large number of school closures, the Catholic school system’s long-standing goal of educating economically disadvantaged students in inner city schools is in peril. In this study, the researchers examined De Marillac Academy, a Catholic, tuition-free middle school, located in the Tenderloin District in San Francisco, CA, to identify both the non-cognitive skills students have learned and the organizational factors in place, which have contributed to ...

The Interactional Production Of Race And Religious Identity In An Urban Catholic School, Robert Jean Leblanc

Journal of Catholic Education

This paper describes how students in an urban Catholic school draw on racial and religious categories to construct classroom-specific identities during coursework. When students engage with each other in classroom discussions, they use broadly circulating, institutional, and event-level categories to position one another, and in doing so articulate who may speak and participate in class talk. This paper draws from interactional ethnographic data, showing how Vietnamese American and African American students used different religious and racial categories to delimit the interactional floor during class time and in the process exclude speakers.

Journal of Catholic Education

Archdioceses and dioceses around the United States continue to brainstorm innovative ways to market their schools in an education system that provides a number of choices to parents and their children. Applying Wenger’s (1998) learning theory entitled Communities of Practice (COPs), the purpose of this case study was to investigate one such plan to improve the viability of three inner-city Catholic elementary schools that had similar missions, were located within just a few miles of one another, and served the same neighborhoods of a working-class, culture-rich Latino community in Southern California. Data collection included in-depth interviews with principals and ...

Who Do You Say You Are: Relationships And Faith In Catholic Schools, Jennifer S. Maney, Carrie King, Thomas J. Kiely

Journal of Catholic Education

This study aimed to evaluate and articulate what makes Catholic schools special and effective by measuring culture and climate in five Catholic high schools and two Catholic elementary schools in a large metropolitan area in the Midwest United States. The seven schools represented a variety of student demographics, location, and size of school. Findings of this study included: the Catholic identity of schools must become an intentional aspect of the planning, orientation, training, and evaluation of the faculty and administration; faculty-student relationships are rarely measured regarding their effectiveness in bolstering academic achievement or Catholic mission effectiveness; cultural awareness and cultural ...

Journal of Catholic Education

School discipline has traditionally endorsed the use of exclusionary practices (i.e. suspension and expulsion). Such practices can have a negative short- and long-term impact on student lives, and tend to be enforced disproportionately with certain student populations. Although public school discipline policies have received increased scrutiny in recent years, Catholic school policies have received very little attention. This study presents the results of a content analysis of the written discipline policies of 33 Catholic secondary schools from two dioceses within a major metropolitan area. Results suggest that although variability exists in the types of behaviors included in formal written ...